The Department of Defense announced $2.61 billion worth of contracts Tuesday in 52 separate awards. Raytheon (RTN) won three of them. Specifically, the defense contractor won contracts for:
- $48.8 million: a contract to supply the U.S. Navy with 13 APY-10 radar kits to be installed aboard Low Rate Initial Production Lot IV P-8A subhunting Poseidon aircraft from Boeing, as well as one spare radar unit. In addition, Raytheon will install, inspect, support, configure, maintain, and when necessary repair this radar system. Work should be completed in January 2016.
- $11.2 million: a contract to perform telemetry on 16 GBU-49 Enhanced Paveway II 500-pound smartbombs and 17 GBU-50 Enhanced Paveway II 2,000-pound bombs to be sold to Saudi Arabia, and to provide 10-year warranties on all of the above. Accordingly, this contract will not be considered fully complete until July 1, 2025.
- $11 million: a contract to perform research and development work on the Long-Range Imaging LADAR (LRIL) transceiver for the Air Force. The Pentagon clarifies that LRIL will demonstrate "state-of-the-art in Inverse Synthetic Aperture LADAR (ISAL) technology with the objective of producing an ISAL image from a space object in geosynchronous orbit. The LRIL program comprises four phases. Phase I is a laboratory demonstration of ISAL components and techniques at the Maui Space Surveillance Site (MSSS). The purpose of Phase I is to complete program detailed planning, produce and validate modeling and simulation results, begin integration of hardware, and produce ISAL imagery in the laboratory. Phase II is a low power demonstration of ISAL on a space object in middle earth orbit and/or geosynchronous orbit. Phase III is a demonstration of ISAL at MSSS advancing Phase II with the addition of an adaptive optics atmospheric compensation system. During Phase IV a high power laser illuminator shall be integrated at MSSS, and ISAL images will be collected from non-optically augmented geosynchronous objects." This contract should be complete by Sept. 28, 2018.
LADAR is the light-based cousin of the more familiar radar -- remotely sensing objects by bouncing a laser rather than a radio beam off of them, and analyzing the reflected light to determine the objects' location, speed, and trajectory.
